Caiman SEG - a few questions re PS, cables, FW upgrade...

[AndrewR]

It's less than £75 delivered in the UK. It's mainly my manufacturing and R&D costs, plus UK VAT and corporation tax. I don't expect a copy cat version to hit the market at less than £99.99 once other designers have stripped mine down to see the circuit layout. Mind you, I understand that one UK based company has used my research to build a copy of some sorts that costs a lot more. But that's to be expected.

I am throwing money at my screen, but it keeps bouncing off.

Andrew

[Getgaff]

The power supply is already on the market. But the first batch already sold out. As a matter of fact it went so quick I just about managed to take a few pictures that I am editing to put on my website. There are a couple of people on this forum who have one. Maybe one of them would be willing enough to post a picture of theirs for now.

Happy to oblige:

[Alp]

Looks great. Am I right in thinking that if I feed it from a 12V battery I will only get 12V out, so for 15V I would need to feed 15-18V?

[Theadmans]

Cool - what colour is the LED - Blue?

[Getgaff]

Cool - what colour is the LED - Blue?

Red, then green

[Getgaff]

Looks great. Am I right in thinking that if I feed it from a 12V battery I will only get 12V out, so for 15V I would need to feed 15-18V?

I believe so, yes. You can use Stan’s “optional 12V PSU as a continuous charger for the Dorado. In that scenario the Dorado is charged up to 15Volt even though the PSU is 12V” (quote taken from the manual).

[twotone]

Hi Stan, I'm up for one of those PSUs for my Seg.

Thanks

Tony

[StanleyB]

Looks great. Am I right in thinking that if I feed it from a 12V battery I will only get 12V out, so for 15V I would need to feed 15-18V?

The instructions are at http://www.beresford.me/downloads/TC-7320%20DORADO.pdf
Basically, you get 12V out with a regulated 12V power supply.
You get 15V out with a regulated 15V power supply.
But you can get 12V or 15V out with the optional 12V unregulated power supply that can be used to power the Dorado. You can of course use your own 12V unregulated power supply instead if you have one.

It is possible to use it at 15V on all of my DACs and phono preamps that I sold from TCC. But you can't use it at 15V on a 12V Capella headphone amp. The Capella would have to be updated to 15V.

As a side note, the Dorado has a special firmware code in the SEG-30 firmware that is usable on the Caiman MKII and SEG. I am trying to add that bit of code to an updated Bushmaster MKI and MKII firmware. I am not there yet, so I don't know if it will work, and if it will sound better or worse than the existing firmware. But let's hope that doesn't take me too long to find out one way or the other.

As for what the firmware does: I'll come back to that in a separate thread. But basically the Dorado can produce a wider soundstage, which produces a better separation within sections of a recording. This in turn has opened up an area for me to experiment with to improve the accuracy of the newly audible sound. i.e. say you had before a vocal section that sounded like just one voice. An example of that is ADELE - 'Make You Feel My Love'. The Dorado can separate the vocals quite clearly. But once it is separated, it is possible to even hear better detail in the newly discovered sound. It's harder to explain than it is to hear in person. I don't know the science behind it, but it is an observation that I made. It's the one main reason why you can hear a difference within seconds between having the Dorado in or out of the loop.

[StanleyB]

Cool - what colour is the LED - Blue?

Green unfortunately. That's the only dual colour LED the factory could get from their local component supplier.

[StanleyB]

Hi Stan, I'm up for one of those PSUs for my Seg.

Thanks

Tony

Do me a favour and send me an email. I know two people called Tony, and both are in Glasgow, and both are members of AoS...